Bain Capital Ventures Introduces StartUp Academy

While it’s common for venture firms to help their portfolio companies recruit high-level executives, Bain Capital Ventures has moved its efforts downstream to help its start-ups hire college graduates in a reflection of the intense competition for technical talent.

StartUp Academy, the name Bain Capital has given to the program, seeks to find graduates from universities such as Duke University, Harvard University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and University of Michigan, and to match their skills with needs at Bain-backed companies.

“When we talk to entrepreneurs in our portfolio, especially in Silicon Valley, the number one challenge they have is recruiting technical talent,” said Sahil Gupta, an associate with the firm. Though graduates at Bay-area universities like Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley often have access and knowledge about how to land jobs at start-ups, students at other universities, especially on the East Coast, are less aware of the opportunity, he said.

At East Coast universities, “a lot of engineers go into banking because they don’t know any better,” said Mr. Gupta, who, as a graduate of University of Pennsylvania, initially went a similar route himself, joining consulting firm Bain & Co. before leaving to start a company. “It’s not an actively mined group of candidates, outside of large players like Google and Microsoft,” he said.

This year Bain Capital whittled down 779 applications, selecting 21 students for potential jobs at portfolio companies that are participating in the program, including automated marketing company BloomReach Corp., loan-pricing software maker Nomis Solutions Inc. and retargeting company TellApart Inc.

The firm will begin the effort again at the start of next academic year, with plans to expand to more campuses and get more participation from portfolio companies, Mr. Gupta said.

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